


brighter world

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Ambiguous/Open Ending, FFXValentines Exchange 2019, First Meetings, Food, Getting away from it all, Grief/Mourning, Holiday Fic Exchange, Inspired by Music, Inspired by Nonfiction, Introspection, M/M, Mental Link, Minor Character Death, Soul Bond, Valentine's Day Fic Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-21 17:20:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18145142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: So he doesn’t become paralyzed by a new grief, Gladio takes an unexpected trip -- and he’s not quite going on pilgrimage, but he’s entirely unaware that there’s someone waiting for him at the end of the road. Someone he knows even when he’s never actually met them. There’s a song in his head, and he’s about to trace it all the way to its source, and his soulmate.





	brighter world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zafra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zafra/gifts).



> Written for Twitter user @MelodyBSunday’s prompt, for a gladnis fic: _sixth sense you get when you are so close to someone it’s like you share their thoughts. Maybe you do?_
> 
> And all my thanks to Shadi for the impetus to find the musical inspiration for this AU, which included: [now that I have you](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0Zxw4FNoVc) // [pretty world](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoN6tGEKjCM) // [baby you’re mine+copernicus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qes2jqI7Cu0)
> 
> Thanks to the mods of @ffxvexchange for putting this event together!

It almost feels like he’s been walking for forever and a day, and maybe he’s been listening to the others too much or too often or maybe he’s been clinging to their voices, because they’re familiar, and they talk about things he knows, things that are so far away from the place where he’s now standing, they might as well be on another world. This wind-shaped shoreline far below his feet. This stone-trail, winding and tracing gentle meanders up gentler slopes. The sun in its warmth, not at all searing, despite the mirror-like clarity of the blazing-blue sky.

Boys’ voices talking about: the last of the winter snows, the last of the long-clinging long-biting bitter cold. Icicles, of all the things -- he doesn’t know how Prompto can talk for a solid five minutes about icicles, and touch on pretty much everything, from black-and-white photographs to the steady metronomic rhythm of melting to murder weapons.

Icicles as the perfect tool for a perfect murder, and that doesn’t really make a lot of sense to him, even though he’s starting to come around to the thought, and that’s alarming, because Noctis was already convinced, after those five minutes, and he doesn’t need to know things like that, and he does anyway because he didn’t just skip over that part of the podcast.

(He had timed that. He had checked the start time and end time of that entirely earnest ramble, jaunty and weirdly matter-of-fact all throughout. Why does Prompto talk like he’s considered all those things very carefully, and very seriously? He has to ask, because he’s certainly spent enough time around the two of them and he knows they like to stream-of-consciousness off each other. It’s like a real-time comedy routine of some kind, a live sound-check straight into the way their thoughts run together.)

(Gladio misses them both terribly, and he’s sent them several kitschy postcards over the course of this trip, and they all say the same thing, in his angular scrawl. _Weird that I miss you guys. It’s still true._ )

(And Prompto answers with short sentences in tall looped letters, and Noctis fills in the corners of the postcards with caricatures of the cat that they both feed and pet and play with but don’t own, because that cat is fiercely independent and actually rather rude sometimes, and how many times has Gladio knocked on the door to their flat, and found its gray-striped length stretched across nearly the entire threshold? Belly up, tail-tip languidly twitching, stupidly huge ears folded down.)

(Dammit he misses the cat too, and he wonders whether it’s there with them, being its usual spoiled furry self, or if it’s run off on some trip, as he’s done.)

And there’s a soft wash of music playing in the back of his head, a song that he’s had reason to hear in recent days, and he wonders at that -- not even for the first time -- delicately plucked chords on a guitar, rambling in a way that makes him think of practice runs and also an intricate melody line for someone to sing along to.

He’d be happy to just wallow in it, drift in it and let it guide his thoughts down into soft white noise, except for the fact that he doesn’t even know what song it is.

All the other times he’s heard the music, he’s only ever heard it in a single repeating phrase, but now there’s a sort of development in it, like variations on the original theme.

And the beat in it is starting to change, too, in a way that makes him quicken his steps just a little, just enough to feel like he’s marching along.

Trail unspooling at his feet, a gray-green ribbon of rough-hewn stone that bears up his lightening steps, that makes him bounce in a way that’s almost comfortable, that makes him feel like he can just keep on walking and walking and walking, as long as he has the strength for it, as long as he has the music to keep him company, and the episodes of Prompto and Noctis’s podcast too. Their voices talking about the world at large, and the world as they see it, in the shared experience of their minds linked together.

Although he takes another sip from his canteen, bright-green flexible pouch and its trailing drinking straw, its little spring-cord cap -- and can’t help but wonder if he’ll be able to refill it, any time soon. If he can get out of the strong sea-winds blowing fine sand and flaky salt into his face, into his eyes. He’s got his hair up in a mostly tight braid so he doesn’t really have to worry about stray strands whipping at his skin. There’s a map on his phone, that tells him that there’s a rest-stop somewhere ahead -- but it also tells him that the trail winds on for a long way yet, before it even gets to one more set of national borders, and then on at last to a great and ancient cathedral. The end point of a long and famous pilgrimage.

He only knows these things because his sister had told him about the long walk that some people make. About the reasons why some people might walk hundreds of miles on their own two feet, taking in the sights of several countries both large and small along the way, before heading to a community united in one blessing, and one celebratory meal.

As for him -- maybe he has a very vague and very old memory of walking some part of this path, bounced along on someone’s back, because he’d been small enough then to fit into a baby carrier, young enough then to care nothing about fatigue and the dust of the road. 

That’s not his full explanation for walking here on these still-strange paths. That’s not his full explanation for flying a long way from home, just to clear his mind. 

He keeps dreaming of rolling hills and a strange view of uniform white-marble gravestones, and flags and flowers planted before those gravestones.

Maybe he’d had that dream last night; maybe not. He’s just here, in the now, and he walks, and when the sun finally starts to feel like it’s beating and burning down into the skin of his shoulders, he turns off the trail and -- he’s grateful to catch sight of a stand of scrubbed pine-like trees.

Needle-greened branches whispering overhead, like the trees are having a conversation too, and it’s both a lot like and a lot unlike the conversations with his friends, and he thinks that he needs to reach out to them, properly, in real-time.

He might be atop towering cliffs without another living being in sight for miles, but that only means that there’s no one else here to share an Internet connection with, and he hits a speed-dial sequence: the call connects and rings, rings, rings.

He’s half-expecting the whole thing to go to voicemail, as it normally does with them.

“H’lo big guy.”

He blinks, and sits down in a tuft of grass that scatters tiny pale-green seeds with the movement of his hand as he switches over to the speakerphone. “I woke you up.”

“We’re not very asleep yet, or at least I’m not.” There’s a tell-tale rasp in the voice, though, like a very late night, like a conversation of hours and hours, the way they get when they’re in that slow recovering moment between finishing a recording for their podcast, and reaching for the nearest flasks of hot tea and coffee.

He still feels a little bit weirded out by the fact that Prompto makes these hot-citrus-juice concoctions that Noctis drinks without having to be bullied into the act, although he also remembers trying a version that had been made cloudy and aromatic by two shots of rum -- there might have been more -- or it might have been something even stronger than rum -- and he’d actually nearly fallen asleep on their couch after two large mugs and then they had called him a cab and kicked him very nicely out of their loft.

“...Prompto’s most of the way out though. I think I need to get him out of here. Time for another vacation. Is it nice where you are?”

“Sunny, windy, very nice to take pictures of if you’re into that kind of thing,” he says. “Which I know he is, and you’re not. But this isn’t the kind of vacation the two of you ever have in mind, and that makes you weird. Even I prefer to get away from it all, every once in a very long damn while, and for me that means -- beachy kinds of places.”

Yawn, long and deep, and he nearly catches it, and then Noctis coughs a little and says, “Well we’re happy to be weird or we wouldn’t be doing the podcast in the first place.”

“You’re already weird enough on your own,” he says, sort of an affirmative, and he wishes he could ruffle their hair: spiked up, dark hair and golden.

That music continues to play on and off in the back of his head, and that makes him ask, and it’s the question that made him make this call in the first place. “Noct.”

“Oh, is it that kind of conversation? Let me just -- hang on, okay?”

How does he know?

Rustling, muffled sounds like something ticking, and then the steady thud of footsteps on the move, before he can hear his friend’s voice again. “I got him an extra blanket.”

“Why do you guys want to go to rainy cities if you get cold so quickly?” he asks, blinking, even though there’s no sunshine to get directly into his eyes.

“Because it’s not the cold we’re visiting,” is the slightly crackling reply. “What was the serious question, come on, I know there was one -- or do I have time to make toast or something?”

The thing about it is, he’s never even had the thought of asking these questions, whether for himself or for others, and so he can’t really find his words. “If you’re hungry, go and make the toast.”

“This is about me’n’Prom though.” Noctis says their names as just the one word. “Your question.”

“There was a general part and there was a specific part,” he says, “and you guys were in the specific part. Don’t know how far back you can remember, is the thing. You’ve known you were bonded all your lives.”

“Weren’t you there for some of it?” is the half-mocking, half-kind answer.

“Yes I was. But near as I can remember, we had to wait for you guys to figure your shit out before we could start understanding it ourselves.”

Snort, _ping!_ , and the thump of a door closing, it sounds like. “I was going to say, _Point_ , but you do realize that’s the only way these things can go, right?”

“Right. I think.”

“Pretty much,” and Noctis yawns again, right in his ear. “So. What is it exactly?”

He can’t help but hum along when the melody in his head seems almost familiar. “I’ve always heard a sort of music in the back of my head. I can’t even tell you when it started. I hear it maybe, I don’t know, not every day, or something like that. I hear it like -- sometimes it would be a long burst. Sometimes a short one. And I’d hear it every once in a while, but lately it’s been getting louder, and longer, and more,” he waves his hands even though Noctis can’t see. “There’s more to it, now.”

“Since you got there, or what?” Crunch, crunch, follows the question.

“That’s the confusing part. Took three or four days for it to start. But once it did start, once I got here -- I started hearing it every day. I’m listening to it right now.”

“Hmm.” More crunching, and then something that sounds like scraping. “Shit we’re almost out of butter, why are we out of butter?” Whisper of Noctis complaining. “Sorry Gladio. Where was I?”

“I have no idea,” he says.

“Music, huh?” he hears Noctis ask, after a few moments. “I wish I knew what that was like. We just heard each other. I was a voice in his head, and he was a voice in mine. You know?”

He lets himself laugh. “Yeah, I know. Everyone told you that sort of thing didn’t happen to kids. Shows what we know.”

“Yeah. It didn’t make sense until I decided I’d just go out and find the voice, find the owner of the voice. Good thing we didn’t all have to go looking far, or for long.”

“You’d have driven us all crazy,” he says, but he hopes Noctis can hear that he’s only joking.

“Which is probably where you are right now, huh.” Noctis actually sounds like he’s thinking the words through. “So I forgive you for waking us up.”

“You said I didn’t wake you,” he says, blinking again.

“You didn’t wake me, but -- hey, over here,” he hears Noctis say, and then there’s a thump on that end of the line.

“Gladio,” and that’s Prompto, slurring and then -- a long groan of a yawn. “Umm. Yeah. Sorry.”

“Shut up,” he says, a little fondly.

For some reason he catches a whiff of -- not the brave little purple star-shaped flowers nodding in the wind, brushing at his boots and leaving faint traces of golden dust. Scent of fruits, like slicing something open to let the ripe richness of it out into the world. 

“I’m sorry, too,” he says. “Woke you up.”

“It’s a serious question,” he hears Prompto say, after a moment of background-noise mumbling, and the pop of a bottle being opened. “Noct told me. You’re hearing something now?”

“I’ve been, for a while,” he says, and he runs through the explanation again, because Prompto hadn’t been there for the first time.

As though the voice in his head knows he’s talking about its bearer, he hears a soft phrase: _You, you opened the door --_

“Say again?” he hears Noctis mutter, immediately afterward. “What was that?”

“I think I just heard them -- sing,” he says, more than a little shaken by the quality of the voice. Not that it’s bad -- it’s rusty, it had started out unsteady, but in one short sequence he thinks he’d heard a different kind of sweetness, something like the faraway echoes of training, maybe a long time ago.

The only thing that drives him up the wall about it is how unfamiliar the voice is.

“I’ve only ever heard them playing instruments. Guitar, mostly,” he explains. “But now I just heard a voice. I’ve never heard it before, obviously, you can tell by how I’m freaking out. It’s -- I don’t honestly know what to say. It wasn’t a bad voice though. They sounded pretty nice.”

The laughter he gets in return is not at all sharp or mocking. “Took you a while to get there, and then -- suddenly it’s all that, huh,” he hears Noctis say. “Then it’s all the things and you have literally no frame of reference for any of it. Which, again, is the whole point.”

“You’ve heard us talk about it,” he hears Prompto add.

“You need to do an entire episode on it,” he says. “If you need me to actually ask you to do it I will. See if I won’t.”

“No way, man, we don’t know enough people to make it -- not just some kind of narcissistic shitty thing,” Noctis says, with another snort. “I mean, everything gets said about it and everything is true and no one has any real idea of what actually happens when the whole thing gets started, or how it all gets started at all.”

“Good luck finding actually relevant advice, because we don’t have it, and we don’t know anyone who might have it,” Prompto says, and he must take a bite of something somewhere in the middle of the sentence, because Gladio can hear him chewing and swallowing. “But. Well, You’re not entirely new to the idea, because of us. But it’s still unfamiliar. So, so maybe you’re looking for reassurance. Is that it?”

“Yes, but not all of it. I mean. If you keep saying there ain’t anything relevant,” he begins.

Again that whisper of a voice, again that phrase, in the back of his mind.

“If you never heard the voice before, if you didn’t start hearing it until today -- then you might be getting closer, like, maybe you needed to travel to another country to meet yours,” and that’s Noctis. “Maybe your person is somewhere in the place you are now.”

“Which is -- literally the middle of nowhere. On a very pretty coast, but still the middle of nowhere. Have I mentioned I’m literally the only tourist in my hotel?”

“Then who else is there? Why is there even a hotel?”

He shrugs, again, as if they were there with him to carry on a face-to-face conversation. “I kept seeing posters for -- visiting the cliffs. Local tourism maybe.”

“Ugh enjoy,” and Prompto laughs, warm and rising.

In the background Gladio thinks he hears a _Hey hi!_ and then -- there’s a long low rolling purr-growl noise.

“Look who came to visit,” he hears Noctis say. 

“Hello cat friend,” he hears Prompto say. “Say hi to Gladio, cat friend, come on.”

 _Mrew,_ like a short burp, and that makes him smile, a little, because there is nothing short or small about that particular cat.

“I think he’s trying to tell you you’ll be fine, Gladio.”

“Thanks, I think,” he says, and he hangs up to the sounds of the two of them cooing, thankfully not at him.

Maybe he’ll finally buy something from the market around the corner from his hotel, and send it on to them as a thank-you gift.

But the trail is calling to him again, and he resettles his backpack on his shoulders, and steps back out into the sun and the stone and the scrub-grasses around him, humming, humming, even as he nearly immediately hits a long slope heading downwards and -- he finds his steps going faster, faster, and he grins and leans into it, starts running.

Lets himself whoop, as he crosses over from the walking trail to the paved four-lane highway, and the echoes of his voice rise like a solo kind of joy.

Echoes that he’s long since left behind by the time he catches sight of tables and chairs laid out around a fountain. Moss in the cracks of its stone and its tile, but the water leaps with bubbling song, with quiet laughter, into the glare of midday.

As he watches, he hears the shriek of incoming wings, flight in a loud clattering rush, and he just about fights off the urge to duck -- but the birds fall in around him, heedless rush, and beaks dipping toward the water in ragged unison: feathers in several shades of deep blue, and each one of them is larger than his hand.

He approaches carefully, anyway, and nearly takes a picture of their faces once he’s close enough to really see the details, because the wide bands of black around their eyes make them look like masked superheroes.

One of the birds looks right at him, and tilts its head, and lets out a loud cry, and he doesn’t leap away in shock, he really doesn’t.

But a girl half-runs out of a nearby door -- he hadn’t even seen it, or the structure that it must have been a part of, perhaps a house, perhaps a very small hotel. White apron fluttering with the way she moves, and the cord-stitching in the front traces out the shapes of the same tables and chairs surrounding the fountain. Her bright-golden hair caught up in a bushy ponytail just above the nape of her neck -- and her own thin braids wrapped around whatever elastic thing she’s wearing, hiding it from sight.

“Shoo, go on with you,” he hears her shout, as she waves her hands at the birds. “Come back after lunch!”

One of the birds ruffles out its wings; one of the others begins to groom itself, and they’re all ignoring her, choosing instead to cackle at each other.

And Gladio grins, because he never expected to be in this situation, in this place, and yet he knows what to do.

“May I?” he asks, shrugging in the direction of the birds.

She blinks at him. “What are you planning to do?”

“This,” he says, and he pulls a coin from his pocket, and plants himself in a patch of sun, and -- starts tossing the coin so it flips end over end. Showy enough that the edges do nothing but catch the light.

The birds turn toward him, one by one, and he grins at several sets of beady black eyes before he turns, gauges the emptiness of the street -- winds up and throws the coin, in a direction away from the tables and chairs -- and the flock takes wing with a screech like several sides of an argument, suddenly and loudly begun.

“Nicely done, and thank you,” says a male voice, and something about its low tones is almost familiar to his ears. “But what happens if you want to buy something, and find yourself running short because you threw your coins at those birds? You do realize you won’t be getting that coin of yours back.”

“I don’t care, they can keep it, and I can’t exactly spend that coin here in your place, either, if this is yours. I mean, it’s not local money. It’s from my country, it’s not from around here.”

“We’ll take any tips you want to give us, we don’t care,” the girl says -- she’s standing next to him, suddenly, sun-worn lines bracketing her smile, and radiating from the corners of her eyes. “Tips in strange coins are still tips.”

“I’ll give you my coins,” he says, and he shrugs at the man standing in the doorway.

Reflections of sunlight catching on the silver and steel of that man’s eyeglasses, sleek shapes of the lenses to echo the sharp angles of his cheekbones and his jawline. Faded burn-scars all up and down the left side of his face that are only echoed by the more vivid and more recent lines on his bared forearms.

His smile is no less small and amused and welcoming for all that it’s scarred, too, knife-thin wedge cutting into his upper lip, and continuing down towards his chin, fainter the farther it goes.

“It’s not like we can turn your generosity down.”

The laugh falls out of Gladio, entirely out of his control, and he tries to muffle it and the girl is walking toward the door too. “Sorry.”

“Laugh away,” she says, grinning like she’s thinking about making trouble -- for him? For the birds? For the man who’s shaking his head as he disappears inside? “We like to laugh at him too.”

“Just don’t wanna offend anyone,” he says, and he stops on the threshold and looks around. “Especially not if I’m going to stop here for a bit. -- Where am I though?”

“The only rest-stop for a hundred miles, give or take a couple hundred more,” the girl says, and she’s taking something out of the pocket of her cropped trousers, she’s pinning it onto the strap of her apron and he squints at the letters on it. “Lucky you, we just opened for the day.”

“Lucky, yeah, I guess I am, if you don’t count pissing off the birds,” he says, as he takes one of the smaller tables. He has a view of the fountain, not a blue feather in sight, and he can also see a battered-looking upright rack and about half a dozen bicycles chained to it. “So, Luna, what would you recommend?”

“Depends, because if you’re hungry you should just order the whole menu,” he hears Luna say.

He blinks as he looks back in her direction. “The whole what now?”

“Three courses, breakfast or lunch, and then it’s coffee and bread and pastries until midnight when we close,” she reels off. “Everything’s good, because we make almost everything ourselves.” Thumb over her shoulder, pointing to the open doorway in the back of the room. “So are you hungry or not?”

He thinks about it -- he’s probably walked off his breakfast and then some -- and he sighs, takes off his backpack, settles into the chair that creaks gently under his weight. It’s a weirdly comforting sound. “I guess I should eat something -- I still have to walk back, and maybe you already know the hotel’s not exactly around the corner or something,” he says. “Three courses, you said?”

The smile she tosses in his direction is mischievous. “We know where the hotel is. Now, is there anything you can’t eat or won’t eat? Please say no.”

He can’t help but grin back at her. “I’ll try anything once.”

“Challenge accepted,” and she talks, strangely, like Prompto when he’s hopped up on too much sugar or too much coffee -- but before he can tell her that, she’s bouncing away, and he’s left to himself in the cool shadows of the dining room.

Tables and chairs, not exactly cramped, but there aren’t even a dozen of the former all told, which gives him a pretty good idea of how small this room really is -- and that’s before he spots the shelves hugging the walls, some of them leaning against each other, with their little bits and pieces of driftwood, of sand-glass, of seashells laced with nacre.

Before he can pull out his phone and think about something to read, or maybe another episode of the podcast, the song that he’s been hearing starts up again in the back of his mind and he lets himself almost hum along -- it vibrates in the spaces of his head, in the hollow of his throat and the soft spots behind his earlobes -- he lets himself get lost in it, long enough that he starts, stares, when he realizes that someone is whistling -- and that the whistling actually goes along with the melody.

A melody that isn’t coming from him -- that’s coming closer, closer, from the direction of the fountain -- imperious rhythmic footsteps, and -- woven into them -- the piercing high note.

It seems like he blinks and then the woman is filling up the open door, seawater still running off her shoulders and her legs in rivulets, and the blazing orange of the straps looped from her shoulders and around her waist sort of tells him what she does when she’s in the water, as does the slim-line bag wrapped in clear plastic, that is buckled at her hip and knee.

Where could she have come from? Where is the path to the sea? She can’t have carried her things far; she’s not even carrying a towel of any kind. Just the shortboard by her side, black to match her wetsuit and swim cap, and she props it up against the doorframe by its nose and fins, before she fills up the room with her actual voice: “Lunafreya!”

Thump, thump, rapidfire footsteps on the move, and Gladio can only stare as Luna literally vaults the counter that houses the till, and leaps straight into the woman’s arms. “Nea!”

“I only just saw you this morning, didn’t I?”

He turns away the moment they kiss, and he doesn’t honestly what to do with himself, because it’s only a little bit awkward, here, waiting on a meal without even knowing what, exactly, he’s ordered -- and all on top of being here, when he doesn’t even know where _here_ is, when he doesn’t even know the name of this place.

Scrape and hiss of a chair from nearby: the woman who towers over Luna pulls off her cap to reveal silvery-blonde hair in half a dozen tight plaits, each one carefully pinned to follow the slope of her skull.

It’s only when Luna brushes her hand over her shoulder that Gladio makes the connection between their hairstyles.

“Nice to meet someone new around here,” the silver-haired woman says as she sits down. “Did you get lost?”

“I’ve just been walking the trails, and this is -- you can probably tell I’ve never been here before,” he says. “Tell you the truth, you’re the most people I’ve actually seen around, since I left the airport, and all the city spaces around it.”

“You’re here in the off-season,” is the offhanded reply. “Which is a good thing. You’d never be able to enjoy this coast if you came here as part of a herd. Unless, of course, you like being part of a herd. Name’s Aranea, by the way.”

“Gladiolus,” he says. “Everyone just calls me Gladio.”

He shakes her offered hand.

“Here you are,” Luna says, as she sets his place at the table: tanned hands, quick and easy movements, as she lays out cutlery and a service plate and a pair of water goblets. “I’ll bring your food out in a moment.”

To Aranea she offers a heavy-looking cup, as big around as a bowl. “Pick your poison.”

“Soup’s fine by me, whatever you’ve already got going. I don’t think I can eat proper, yet; I’ll let you know when I get there.”

“Got it.”

Only after Luna’s gone back into what he thinks has to be the kitchen does he dare to ask: “You were whistling something when you came in.”

“Yeah, well, you spend an hour in this place and you’ll wind up learning that song, whether you want to or not, and I decided to do the thing I teach people, which is -- take the path of least resistance.” She laughs, a little, and he can’t help but shake his head and smile.

“Sort of figured you’d be some kind of lifeguard.”

“Surfing instructor, actually, but I’m senior to everyone else, too, so this year I’m also the closest they’ve got to emergency personnel.”

“That must be fun,” he says, and he means every word.

“Come down some morning if you can make it,” she says. “Though I don’t know how much longer you’ll be around.”

“That wasn’t even subtle,” he says, and he laughs when she makes a face in response.

“I was trying to be.”

“Nope,” he says, and then there’s nothing more to say because Luna’s coming back out, and there’s far too much food on the cart she’s carefully pushing towards them, and he can’t help but start to get to his feet.

“Sit down please.” Such a sunny smile that Luna sends his way -- but he’s sure that the steel in her eyes isn’t a trick of the light.

She whistles, absently -- he’s almost certain it’s the same as Aranea’s song, but for the little trills she adds on -- as she arranges platters on his table: salad surrounded by an assortment of food speared on picks and skewers, a whole roasted bird about the size of his own two fists put together, and a heap of dark-crusted rolls. Butter and a gravy boat, and, off to the side, a tall carafe of ice and water and several large slices of red-pulped citrus fruit.

The cup goes to Aranea, and when she passes him he smells stock and vegetables and more butter, and a heavy hand with the black pepper.

“Tell Ignis thanks,” and Aranea takes a spoon from the other side of Gladio’s table and digs in.

“He knows,” he hears Luna say.

And to him: “Enjoy your meal.”

He doesn’t even really feel the pinch of hunger, way down in his belly and lower, until he chooses one of the laden skewers entirely at random, and pops the whole thing into his mouth -- and then he’s blinking in shock over the spicy marinade and the perfectly grilled cube of steak, the flakes of salt on the lettuce and on the tiny little cucumber and on the slice of radish.

Chew, swallow, and a quick sip of water -- before he finds one more of those skewers, the exact same components put together in exactly the same arrangement, and he’s braced for the heat and the flavors now, and he can try to savor them this time, now that he’s over the surprise.

“Good?” Aranea asks after he tries the salad and it’s just as interesting, just as full of depth, fine-shaved root vegetables mixed into the greens, and the dressing is an intense compound of savory and citrusy flavors.

Citrus?

Why was that so familiar?

“I don’t think they ever taught me enough words in school,” is the first thing that comes out of his mouth, after he organizes his thoughts. After he takes a deep breath and then chews and swallows. “I mean, to describe what I’m eating and how good it is. Like, I don’t even know what these tastes are. All I know’s I want to keep eating it and eating it.”

“That’s a common reaction,” and by the time he turns in the direction of Luna’s voice, she’s already all but disappeared behind the polished bulk of the coffee machines. All he can see of her is the top of her blonde hair, and the braid that’s half-sprung free of its pins. “I mean, why shouldn’t it be. It’s Ignis.”

“You realize you’re not really telling him anything,” and he can hear Aranea laughing, over the rocket-ship sounds of coffee being made. “Stranger. Strange land. That mean anything to you?”

“Well it’s not like he was actually -- almost famous. He was. Internationally. Almost there.” Luna emerges, and he thinks she might be pouting, as she sets a steaming cup at Aranea’s elbow. 

“He chose to -- not be.” Shrug, when he glances at Aranea.

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, to both of them. “Or who. I think you were talking about a person. Weren’t you?”

“Quit teasing the poor man, you two,” and the man in the eyeglasses comes out of the back and around the counter, and leans on the polished wood. 

In a distant corner of his mind, Gladio wonders how much of the conversation the man has already heard.

But all that man says, to continue, is: “Let him eat in peace.”

“He started it.”

He makes a face at Aranea, then, even as he cuts into the roasted bird. The white meat nearly melts on his tongue, herb-rich and juicy and mellow. “What do you mean I started it?”

“Why’d you even start talking to me?”

He nearly points his fork at her; the only thing that stops him is the thought that maybe she’ll make him pay for the gesture, maybe she’ll grab the fork and stick it in him, and he doesn’t want that at all: so he makes himself eat another mouthful of salad greens instead. “Because you’re so easy to miss in a crowd, coming into this place straight from the seawater.”

“Which I do every day, the path’s just around the corner,” she says.

“Nea,” and that’s Luna, who looks like she might be hiding a smile behind her hand. “Be nicer to him please. He helped me chase off the birds.”

“Those vicious shits,” and Aranea grins, shakes her head, gets to her feet. “And all this time you’d been asking me questions about the -- song. The thing I was whistling.”

“Wait, what?” Luna, tilting her head, eyebrows pulling together. “Do you mean -- ”

“Yes, that. Come on, let’s leave them to it,” and then -- of all the things she’s pulling Luna to her feet, away from the table, out the front door -- and that leaves him alone with the man who’s come out of the kitchen.

Who, when Gladio glances back at him, seems like he’s trying to _not_ suddenly throw his apron up over his face. 

“I feel like I should apologize on their behalf,” that man says, eventually, once he’s calmed down enough to almost produce a quiet sort of laugh, low and too intimate. “I have to admit, in the off-season we tend to be terribly rude to each other, and hence to everyone who blunders into our path, and -- I’m quite aware that does include me. I was asking them to be polite to you,” and Gladio watches him wipe his hands off on his trouser-legs, and approach. “And I was asking them to be something I wasn’t. I haven’t even gotten your name, nor have I given you mine.”

In the face of that smile, that faint flush in those pretty cheeks in all their angles, it’s easy to get to his feet -- and it’s easy to stick his hand out. “Gladio.”

“I did hear you say that. I’m Ignis, and -- well, for lack of a better word, this place is mine. At least the kitchen is. Sometimes people come here to eat, too.” 

The handshake is -- he almost wishes he could linger over it. A hand as interesting as the rest of the man, as Gladio can feel the hot spots of recent burns, and the cold in the fingertips. The lines of raised scars over the back of the hand.

Instead, he sits back down, and says, very sincerely, “It’s damn good food. That’s all I can say.”

“Which I should let you get back to. And there might be a little something, for afters, that I was holding back for later. The cheeses need time to -- settle.”

“I’m fine with unsettled cheese,” he says, and he counts it as a victory when Ignis _does_ cover his face with his hand, and laugh as he retreats to the kitchen once again.

Still: he didn’t need to be reminded that the food is good, and he applies himself to the bird with a will, and sops up the juices with a dense-crumbed roll, or two. And maybe he saves some of the small bites for last because there’s something about the peppery kick of the meat, sliced paper thin, wrapped around a golden-yellow cube of soft-fleshed fruit, that nearly bursts with juice when he bites in, carefully. 

He nearly emails Noctis, though, to taunt him about only ever eating canned pineapples, because that means he’s going to miss out on that particular fruit. Sweetness like distilled summer sun, that he lingers over, thoughtfully.

“Oh, well, that is a compliment,” and he doesn’t jump when Ignis appears at his side once again, he really doesn’t.

“Sorry?” He blinks, and pulls out one of the chairs at the table. “Do you want to sit?”

“I shouldn’t, but seeing as there’s no other custom -- no one has to know, right?” And Ignis turns the chair back to front, straddles it easily -- and then reaches out to tap the rim of one of the serving dishes, smiling just a little. “Clean plates. I like seeing those. I’m glad you liked the fruit bits. Did you enjoy your meal?”

“Very, very much,” he says. “I don’t know what you did to that bird but I kind of wished I could eat the bones, too. You do all the cooking here?”

“Luna is responsible for our bread. She has -- a magical touch when it comes to that,” is the reply. “Although I wouldn’t advise you to linger nearby when she’s kneading.”

He laughs because he has no idea what to say to that.

So the tray that Ignis has brought with him this time is a welcome distraction: cheeses neatly arranged around the center of the wooden board, and several different shapes of crackers around the edge, and a huge bunch of grapes, so darkly purple they almost look black to him. 

He blinks. Looks at the man who’s now sharing the table with him. “You can’t possibly expect me to eat all of this by myself -- you’re going to have to help me out here.”

Ignis’s smile becomes thinner, and more amused, he thinks. “Well, when you put it that way.” 

He almost forgets the entire start of this trip, and the fact that he’d simply gotten onto a train platform right at the airport, never really considering where he’d end up until he’d emerged at another station and realized that he could start walking to the cathedral, to that ancient place of blessing.

Walking, unconsciously, in his father’s footsteps, in the weeks just after the first anniversary of that same father’s death -- all without even meaning to.

Ignis -- doesn’t talk much, and that’s all right. Gladio’s more than fine with this silence, this easy acceptance.

He’s more than grateful for the lack of questions. For the time to listen to the song as it loops in the back of his mind, wordless again, but a comfort for all of its emerging intricacies that he can’t even entirely follow.

And Gladio watches Ignis eat, and takes his own time between bites, and it’s strange that this place has suddenly started feeling like -- a place that he knows. A place that he’s familiar with: the curtains fluttering from only one of the windows, and sunlight falling in lacy patterns onto clean tablecloths. The continuing whisper-song of the fountain outside. The sharp smoky flavors of the firm cheese, golden-pale in its reddish-brown rind -- he cuts that large piece into several smaller cubes, so Ignis can pick at it at his own pace. 

He doesn’t even remember deciding to divide the grapes more or less in half, counting them out by touch, separating them into two ragged piles.

The last grape that he takes off the stem he eats, carefully, covering his mouth with his hand as he chews so none of the syrup-sweet juices escape. 

Slowly the quality of the light shifts, deepens and grows paler at the same time, and he blinks, a little, when Ignis pushes the rest of the crumbly, green-veined cheese in his direction. 

“I do have to get back to my work. Dishes to wash, and -- the coffee for later. Pastries. Would you like to try some? They’re more of a collaborative effort, really, even Aranea contributes from time to time.”

Even as he reaches into his pocket for his billfold, he feels his face grow hot. “I’d like that, yeah. Maybe later. But before that -- sorry, should I be apologizing for taking up all that time with you?”

“I really didn’t feel the time passing -- but it was good to spend it with you.”

“Same,” he says. “Except I still don’t know much about you; weren’t we supposed to, I don’t know, small-talk ourselves to death?”

“We can still do that if you’d like.” Ignis laughs in such a self-contained way, but the lines around his eyes deepen further, Gladio thinks, every time he smiles. “But I will ask your pardon if I have to speak to you from inside the kitchen.”

“I don’t mind at all.” Still, he helps stack the plates until Ignis laughs and waves him off. “How much do I owe you?”

Ignis tells him, and he raises an eyebrow and adds a couple of bills to the total, and leaves the entire amount next to the till, trapped underneath a clean teacup in its gracefully flower-petaled rim, its vine-painted handle and the tiny buds added to its base.

“That’s very generous of you, really, that’s too much,” he hears Ignis say, amid splashing.

How had Ignis known? But he forgets the question almost immediately. “I don’t know, I’ve certainly paid far, far more for far worse food.”

Quiet laughter, that still carries over the scrubbing sounds coming from the kitchen. “Do I want to know?”

“Insomnia,” he says, and that’s all the answer he cares to give, really, and he’s really not expecting any more response.

So it’s a surprise, again, when Ignis comes out afterwards, drying his hands on a checkered towel, and says, “I was born there. Lived with my mother just outside the eastern Crown district. We lived a few blocks from one of the long boardwalks along the seaside. Sometimes I still dream of it.”

“Really?” 

“Do I not sound Insomnian to you?”

“Entirely different accent,” he says, shaking his head. “You don’t sound like -- my friend at all,” and he carefully does not mention that the friend in question might as well be the heir apparent to the city.

“Perhaps that was her doing,” and Ignis crosses to the coffee machines. “Will you mind very much if I made something for myself?”

“Knock yourself out.”

Another quiet chuckle -- that is quickly drowned out by the godsawful racket of whatever it is the machine does to produce coffee.

It’s disturbing, to say the least, and it’s not even the first time he’s hearing it: so he turns to the song that’s accompanied him so far, to settle his mind -- he leans against the counter and hums, just loud enough that he can actually hear himself over the high harsh hiss of steam --

The hand that catches at his wrist is -- not really a surprise, all things being equal -- and neither is the fact that he can hear the melody as it doubles, as it rises in another voice.

Having heard that song all this way, all this time, so that it had become his companion on the long walk here -- it’s almost closer to relief, is what he feels, now that he’s traced it all the way to the point of his origin, which is not an ancient stop on an ancient trip, but just a man in a kitchen and a cozy-cramped room of a rest-stop. 

A man who’s looking at him with such a wealth of warmth and questions in his eyes.

So it’s a no-brainer to ease himself closer into Ignis’s grip, towards white knuckles around a mug decorated in the same neat pinstripes as the shirt with the stiffly starched collar -- and it’s even easier to ask, “When do you ever play the guitar? Because that was when I first heard the song.”

“The song -- our song,” and Ignis, too, seems to be closing the distance -- to the point of crossing the counter and coming to stand next to him, and all Gladio wants is to let him lean in further. Close enough to touch. “When we’re closed for the winter. Then I, I play, a little, every now and then, to keep my hands warm. I’ve come close to frostbite before, and I really don’t care to repeat the experience.”

“Does the coffee help?”

And he doesn’t want to be released, but -- he smiles, and shakes his head. Detaches Ignis’s hand from his arm and presses it around the coffee cup. Adds, as gently as he can, “Stay warm, please.”

“I -- yes -- but I don’t need any more warming. What with the tail-end of this summer and all.”

He looks at his feet, his dusty shoes, in a patch of sunlight, and he shrugs. “You’re right. What the hell. Wait. Did you hear me thinking about the fruit? Is that why you said -- ”

“I’m sorry that your friend might not appreciate mangoes,” he hears Ignis say, chuckling. “And yes. I might have caught the drift of your thought, if not the words.”

“What’s it called again? Can you get that in Insomnia?”

“Mangoes? Yes. But you’ll pay a king’s ransom for every piece.”

“Damn.” And because he wants to keep hanging on to the song, and to the presence of the person who shares it with him, he starts humming again.

And watches Ignis drink his coffee, in small quiet sips. 

“I didn’t write it, before you could ask.”

He almost laughs. “I wasn’t going to, I swear.”

“You do know I can hear some of your thoughts? And that was not what you were thinking,” but Ignis is still smiling as he says it. “I’m afraid my talents don’t quite lie in that direction. The only explanation I can offer you is, I heard the song a long time ago. I suppose it never really left me, even though I left its source behind.”

“You must have been a kid, when you first heard it.”

“And freshly gone from Insomnia.”

“Maybe sometime,” he says, and he nudges Ignis’s shoulder very carefully with his own, “maybe you’ll let me ask questions about that. _I_ grew up in the eastern Crown district. I wonder if we ever saw each other, as kids. You couldn’t exactly say there were a lot of us there.”

“No, no, you couldn’t, and now I wonder, too.”

Ignis is actively leaning into him, now, and Gladio shifts his weight to keep them balanced and upright and together -- but those movements end with his head on Ignis’s shoulder, and for some reason Ignis doesn’t seem to want to step away from him, or from the dust of his road. 

“Say, I only ever heard one set of words in that song,” he says, as the birds flash past the window, far too bright in the late-afternoon sun. “Can you teach me the rest?”

“Certainly.”

And as Ignis begins to sing, he tries, for the first time, to think about something for the two of them to share -- 

Ignis’s hand wraps around his, strong, steady, warm, and vibrating to the words, to the thoughts, falling into the spaces between them.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on Tumblr at my FFXV sideblog [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or at my main [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/) \-- or, hey, if Tumblr becomes too rotten and we can't talk there any more, there's always Twitter, where I am @ninemoons42.


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